google gadgets

Black Hat presenters [Robert “RSnake” Hansen], CEO of SecTheory, and [Tom Stracener], security analyst at Cenzic, criticized Google in their presentation “Xploiting Google Gadgets”. [Hansen] and [Stracener] say that there’s currently no way for Google to confirm whether Google Gadget creations contain malicious content or not; this leaves the application vulnerable to a wide range of hacking ugliness such as data poisoning, worms, and theft of data. [Hansen] himself isn’t exactly on the friendliest terms with Google. He’s got a bit of a contentious history and he claims that Google has threatened legal action against him. Nevertheless, if what was presented is true and accurate, then Google has a huge security issue that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. Google has not yet commented on the situation.